Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /775 of 860

Algebra Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Find the answer

Compute the number of complex numbers zz with z=1|z|=1 that satisfy 1+z5+z10+z15+z18+z21+z24+z27=01+z^{5}+z^{10}+z^{15}+z^{18}+z^{21}+z^{24}+z^{27}=0

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

Let the polynomial be f(z)f(z). One can observe that f(z)=1z151z5+z151z151z3=1z201z5+z181z121z3f(z)=\frac{1-z^{15}}{1-z^{5}}+z^{15} \frac{1-z^{15}}{1-z^{3}}=\frac{1-z^{20}}{1-z^{5}}+z^{18} \frac{1-z^{12}}{1-z^{3}} so all primitive 15th roots of unity are roots, along with -1 and ±i\pm i. To show that there are no more, we can try to find gcd(f(z),f(1/z))\operatorname{gcd}(f(z), f(1 / z)). One can show that there exist a,ba, b so that zaf(z)zbf(1/z)z^{a} f(z)-z^{b} f(1 / z) can be either of these four polynomials: (1+z5+z10)(1z32),(1+z5+z10+z15)(1z30)(1+z3+z6+z9+z12)(z321),(1+z3+z6+z9)(z301)\begin{aligned} \left(1+z^{5}+z^{10}\right)\left(1-z^{32}\right), & \left(1+z^{5}+z^{10}+z^{15}\right)\left(1-z^{30}\right) \\ \left(1+z^{3}+z^{6}+z^{9}+z^{12}\right)\left(z^{32}-1\right), & \left(1+z^{3}+z^{6}+z^{9}\right)\left(z^{30}-1\right) \end{aligned} Thus any unit circle root of f(z)f(z) must divide the four polynomials (1z15)(1z32)/(1z5)\left(1-z^{15}\right)\left(1-z^{32}\right) /\left(1-z^{5}\right), (1z20)(1z30)/(1z5),(1z15)(1z32)/(1z3),(1z12)(1z30)/(1z3)\left(1-z^{20}\right)\left(1-z^{30}\right) /\left(1-z^{5}\right),\left(1-z^{15}\right)\left(1-z^{32}\right) /\left(1-z^{3}\right),\left(1-z^{12}\right)\left(1-z^{30}\right) /\left(1-z^{3}\right). This implies that zz must be a primitive kkth root of unity, where k{1,2,4,15}k \in\{1,2,4,15\}. The case k=1k=1 is clearly extraneous, so we are done.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.